John Predmore, S.J., is a Northeast Province Jesuit and was the pastor of Jordan's English language parish. He studies art and directs BC High's adult spiritual formation programs. Formerly a retreat director in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Ignatian Spirituality is given through guided meditations, weekend-, 8-day, and 30-day Retreats based on The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Ignatian Spirituality serves the contemporary world as people strive to develop a friendship with God.

Monday, November 17, 2014

Poem: "You, neighbor god, if sometimes in the night" by Rainer Maria Rilke

You, neighbor god, if sometimes in the nightI rouse you with loud knocking, I do soonly because I seldom hear you breatheand know: you are alone.And should you need a drink, no one is thereto reach it to you, groping in the dark.Always I hearken. Give but a small sign.I am quite near.

Between us there is but a narrow wall,and by sheer chance; for it would takemerely a call from your lips or from mineto break it down,and that without a sound.

The wall is builded of your images.

They stand before you hiding you like names.And when the light within me blazes highthat in my inmost soul I know you by,the radiance is squandered on their frames.

And then my senses, which too soon grow lame,exiled from you, must go their homeless ways.